Candles for Emily

One way to introduce (otherwise disinclined) people to poetry is with art about poetry. My daughter found this installation on line. I will have to look up all the poems Emily Dickinson wrote in her annus mirabilis in 1862 (or '63). She wrote 366 (or 360?) poems in 365 days. I don't want to steal this artist's thunder, so read about the beautiful thing Spencer Finch has made here.

This photo is from his website. The patterns in the wax and colors are plenty poem for me. 

It's a bit of a challenge to find information about the annus mirabilis, but of course ED is everywhere. 

"poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity"

Not expecting to find my comfort zone in the Harvard Business Review, but this is a poetry-friendly article. I'm not sure I see how poetry helps develop emphathy, but I do know that writing poetry helps develop creativity. Does reading poetry develop creativity? I'm also not completely sure what a poetry "user" is -- although I know I am one. So I guess it can't be too bad.

Rethinking The Twirly Word

At last my masters thesis is completed. I have lost interest in posting my own poetry on this site. Time to think more and more and more about poems and children (perhaps children of all ages...) and how to get some work and play going on. I'm not sure yet how this will all play out, but I plan to practice speaking out with poetry and other child-like things. At 52, they say it is never too late.

Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares

I've been reading the wonderful novel of their life together and looking on the internet for photos of them. Luckily for me I found a blog with photos of their house in Brazil. I do not read Portuguese, so I can't decipher the captions, but the photos tell the whole story of that amazing house. No wonder Bishop couldn't leave.

RESIDÊNCIA DE LOTA DE MACEDO EM PETROPÓLIS (RJ / BRASIL) - ARQUITETO SERGIO BERNARDES

Portraits of Poets

This is a great exhibit of photos, and other artwork, of poets and friends. I especially like the ones of Anne Sexton with W.S. Merwin and of Marie Ponsot with her children. They are here. The 'double image' of Marianne Moore and Maya Angelou is also startling and beautiful. It would not reproduce here (I'm not skilled enough at HTML to arrange them side by side) so check them out at the original site.


Marie Ponsot with five of her seven children. This 1957 photograph appeared in the Queens edition of The Daily News.


Anne Sexton and W.S. Merwin backstage at the 92nd Street Poetry Center on November 11, 1968. Photographed by Jill Krementz.

Sexton struggled with "madness" most of her adult life, a battle beginning with To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960) and ending with the posthumous The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975). Merwin, a prolific poet and translator, now lives in Hawaii, where he has created a remarkable nature preserve and forest.

Jill Krementz Photo Journal - Portraits of Poets | New York Social Diary

Green Papers for Art

Excellent new website I found: Americans For the Arts (http://www.americansforthearts.org/) and they have two blogs I like.

Green Paper: Arts in Healthcare

Green Paper: Artists’ Residency Programs

Read all about a nationwide effort to make sure arts education gets the attention, respect, and resources it deserves. Here's what their Facebook page says:

Arts Education is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL for the development of our children, from as early as kindergarten all the way up into higher level education.

An education in Fine Arts encourages:

• more developed habits of critical and creative thinking
• more perseverance and dedication to a given task
• better psychological and physical health
• self-discipline, intrapersonal and interpersonal skills

A child who participates in Fine Arts is:

• more likely to succeed academically
• more likely to succeed socially
• more able to express his or herself
• inclined to be more literate than his or her peers

If America's children are to be sucessful in all aspects of their life, then an education that emphasizes Fine Arts is crucial.

Support the Arts!

Cynicism or Joy: Sallinger, Hoagland and Karr

I've been reading more lately, books of course, but also magazine articles, journals, the news on the internet, in the bathroom. I must have more time on my hands, but perhaps just less anxiety in my mind. Anyway, here's an interesting reveiw in the New York Times about Tony Hoagland's poems, his new book, and his approach to cynicism and romance. This is my favorite quote:

'At his best, Hoagland rejects both the cynic’s lie that everything superficially beautiful must be rotten underneath, and the romantic’s lie that everything apparently ugly must possess some essential nobility.'

I was also reading an obit for J.D. Salinger in Rolling Stone this week, where these same themes of romanticism, cynicism, mockery, etc. were in focus. Here's what I took away:

'One reason Holden finds phonies everywhere, Salinger ever-so-quietly insinuates, is that he's unable to find pleasure anywhere.'

Wow - that stopped me cold. That a cynic might be a person who has given up on pleasure?

And what about this, which I found in the bowels of Mary Karr's Lit, when she's discussing the differences between happiness and joy:

'Never have I felt such blazing focus for another living creature. I can't stop looking at him. Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self--delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.'


Karr is talking about the moments after giving birth to her son. I remember that feeling. I also know something about self loathing, self importance, self pity, giving up on romanticism, fear of cynics, and a lot of other stuff. Today, Bob bought me flowers, beautiful pink blooming cyclamen from the Farmers' Market. There was a day when I would have felt gyped because they weren't cut flowers, what a real romantic husband would give his wife, but today I felt joy joy joy -- unexpected and welcome. And now I have to wash his underwear while he pays the bills. Joy joy joy.